CultureCritic interviews Silent London's Pamela Hutchinson...

Read Pamela's Guest Guide to Silent Cinema here. 

In Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard Gloria Swanson famously plays an aged silent movie actress who's star has dramatically faded with the advent of the 'talkies'. Is it fair to say that the introduction of sound left most old stars or directors behind?

By and large, directors made the transition quite successfully. That's a sweeping generalisation, but Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra, John Ford, William Wellman, Ernst Lubitsch, and of course, Charlie Chaplin all made the leap. Erich von Stroheim, who so-stars with Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, didn't make a go of directing talkies for various reasons, but he did become a popular actor, mostly in French sound films.

There's a bit of a myth that silent film actors weren't 'good enough' to make it in the talkies, but the truth is much more complicated. In fact, it's fair to say that not everyone was entranced by the new technology, and they didn't want to work in sound films. The actress and producer Mary Pickford famously said that "it would have been more logical if silent pictures had grown out of the talkies instead of the other way around." That's not just pride speaking.

The advent of sound meant that films had to be made in studios, with fixed microphones, whereas silent films could be shot on location, and both the camera-operator and the actors could move around freely. You'll see some amazing stunts in silent films, and not just in the comedies. In this way, filmmaking in the 1930s was arguably hampered rather than enhanced by sound technology. It was to be a long time before you could film a movie scene on a busy city street, for example.

The fuzzy quality of early recorded dialogue was in no way as expressive as a close-up either, so many actors felt, quite rightly, that the new methods limited their performances and didn't allow them to shine as they had done before. It's fair to say that all these changes came as real shock to many actors, and when you consider what huge stars some of them had become, it was quite a dent to their egos. I mentioned Charlie Chaplin as a director who made great sound films, but for a long time he was adamant that his Little Tramp character was a silent creation and shouldn't speak. So even as late as 1936, in Modern Times, the Tramp remains mute while the other actors are talking.

It sounds rather unscrupulous, but some studios used the transition to renegotiate their stars' contracts too, so faced with the prospect of turning in a feeble performance for less money, several actors decided to call it quits. Louise Brooks, for example, who had fallen out with Paramount and gone to Germany to star in Pandora's Box, couldn't be persuaded to return to Hollywood to dub her scenes in the new 'talkie' version of The Canary Murder Case, so they got someone else to do it for her.

And it was Hollywood or bust for American stars such as Brooks. Staying in Europe wasn't an option for the Kansas-born actress once sound came in, because of the language barrier. Silent films had been cast 'blind', with actors from all over the world – all that was needed was to reprint the captions and a film could be exported widely. That's how you find the Czech actress Anna Ondra in Hitchcock's British films, say. But the coming of sound shattered that illusion too and limited the amount of work that actors could get.

Then of course, with sound films getting attention as 'the new thing', and Hollywood being renowned for its love of novelty, the silent era did get forgotten. A lot of films were left to moulder in warehouses, and in very many cases the prints were actually destroyed. All this distorts our appreciation of how much talent there was around in the silent days and how wonderful some of these films are. Sadly, many still are lost, or only survive in fragments.

Is Silent Cinema a ‘dead' genre? The Artist has just premiered at Cannes, and there are so many screenings in London, do you forecast a resurgence in interest?

I'd love to say yes to your second question, and I think I can, with some reservations. But in one way the answer to your first question is yes too. For me, silent cinema is about far more than just the absence of sound – it's a specific moment in film history. Filmmaking in the silent era was about experimentation on every level: technological, artistic and even industrial. The people making silent movies were working out what a film could be, what a studio could do, and what a star was, all the time. The actors and actresses in these films don't have faces frozen by Botox and many of them learned their craft on stage or in vaudeville. That's very different to today, when most films stars start out in TV. And it is impossible to look at these films isolated from the wider context of the time in which they were made, either: the Great War in Europe, the Russian Revolution, the Weimar Republic in Germany, the Jazz Age and prohibition. So a film made in 1902 is made in utterly different conditions to one made in 1929 – and we can't recreate either scenario in 2011.

Your blog is London-centric. Do you know of any useful links for our readers outside of the capital?

The good news is that there is lots going on outside London. I try to cover big events such as film festivals around the country. If I don't have room to put something on the blog, I tend to tweet it or feature it on the Facebook page. Some places are more blessed with silent film shows than others. For example, there's a flourishing silent film society in Bristol called Bristol Silents. They have monthly screenings and they organise the annual Slapstick Festival, which is really fantastic. So if you're based in the west country, you should check them out. It's always worth keeping an eye on the listings of your local arthouse cinemas the Edinburgh Filmhouse, for example, shows a lot of silent films) and concert halls, where you can catch silent films with full orchestral scores from time to time.

Finally, for those who want to take an interest in silent cinema further, could you recommend any further reading?

The first and most fun book to get hold of is Kevin Brownlow's study of early Hollywood, The Parade's Gone By. He interviewed actors, directors, editors, prop-makers, intertitle writers and almost everyone else who was involved in the movie business at the time and his book is the best introduction you could hope for. Read anything you can by Brownlow, he really is the man in the know. He's done so much work to preserve and popularise silent film, that he won an Oscar for his efforts last year.

Can I offer a fiction tip too? There are lots of wonderful novels about the scandalous early days of Hollywood, but The New Confessions by William Boyd is a real treat for film geeks. The hero of the novel starts out as a propaganda filmmaker in the First World War, but goes on to make silent films in England, Hollywood and Berlin. It's pure fiction, but it takes inspiration from real incidents and filmmakers – sometimes several at the same time. It is also an enthusiastic defence of the stylistic advances made during the silent era – it would take a heart of stone to read that book and not want to go watch some silent movies.

Read Pamela's Guest Guide to Silent Cinema.

Check out the latest news on silent film screenings in London at Silent London here or on Facebook and Twitter.

Click here for details of the Prince Charles Cinema's year-long Silent Cinema Season.

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